This book covers a range of topics within Galician semantics and pragmatics. It involves applications and development of semantic and pragmatic theory within Galician linguistics. The main theoretical model used throughout is provided by Relevance theory, as a general approach to verbal communication. In this respect, two of the main objectives in this book are, firstly, to explore applications of this theory to Galician in order to improve and expand the description of the language and, secondly, to investigate possible consequences of these applications for the theory itself.

The areas covered range from aspects of semantic content, the pragmatic interpretation of various linguistic phenomena, through to non-declarative sentences and discourse markers. The unifying force behind these various topics is three-fold: (a) most of the areas explored are seen as instantiations of language use; (b) they are, consequently, seen as falling under the common remit of verbal communication; and, therefore, (c) they are studied together within a single unified theoretical model. The diversifying factor lies in the range of areas of theoretical application examined. In this respect, one of the main contributions of this book lies precisely in the application of Relevance theory to a diverse, yet theoretically coherent, set of communicative phenomena. These applications, in turn, provide further evidence for the validity of the theory used, particularly through its deployment to a wider set of linguistic data and languages.